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January 10, 2006
Google missteps
Ok, I know this is just their first crack at at this, but does Google Video strike anyone else as a big disapointment? What is going on with the choice of content? The Brady Bunch? Survivor Guatemala? Among the Movies, there’s a selection of semi-appealing documentaries (like “Endless Summer”) along with some campy B-movie horror (“Horror of Hammer”) and 80’s music nostalgia (The Knack made a movie?), and er, “Jack Frost 2”? Eesh.
And can we start admitting that although Google’s got search sewn up, their attempts at almost all the other aspects of findability are pretty poor? It’s kinda fun that the main page is likely to list episodes of “The Twilight Zone” for sale along with krazy krap like “Flexible Gymnast” or “Exploding Overclocking Extreme AMD Duron Vaporizing” and “Munich Mambo”, but there’s really no straightforward way to browse the contents of the video store except alphabetical grids or lists. There are no categories, no organization by date, no listing of what’s popular or new. And can you tell that the episodes of Nova are “Short”, even though the program is an hour long? How long is “Medium” anyway?
Then there’s Google Pack, so completely not the Google OS.. What a strange box of shovelware this turned out to be. It’s worth reading Paul Thurott’s review to get the whole story, but this seems like such a half-assed effort on Google’s part.
Posted by Andrew at January 10, 2006 09:42 AM